


The Breath of Giants

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Abstract Thoughts and Feelings, Dancing (Maybe), Established Relationship, F/F, Genderswap, Johanna Silver is a bastard (but you already know that), Memory, Reminiscing, Rule 63, Sensory Exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15565119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: Jimena Hawkins loses a wager. Under Johanna's watch, she briefly loses herself.





	The Breath of Giants

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt (!!!) at something a little different.
> 
> Characterisations and situations based on Muppet Treasure Island. Muppet characters are adapted into human background roles, although none appear here. This is for non-profit fun only.

“Now come on now, sweetheart.” Johanna had a positively diabolical look on her face, brandy in hand. Even without her crutch, she moved so sweet and easy, tapping her single booted foot on the floor. “I have paid for my show, surely?”

“You’re despicable.” Crouched over at the waist, Jimena clutched the shawl close to her body, trying and failing to gain its modest protection. The outfit Johanna had provided her with was painfully scarce, a white blouse torn beneath the breasts, a ripped array of colourful skirt that slit high on both thighs, and a belt that shimmered fools gold in the turning sunlight. True to her nature, Silver had offered – nay, insisted – on decorating her wrists and neck in gold, wrapping her corn hair above her head, doubloons swaying on her forehead. “How can you insist on this?”

“Hmmm, well…” Silver hummed, riding her finger on her lower lip. “You did lose yer wager, did ye not? Oh, come now Missy Hawkins, I trust an honourable _lady_ wouldn’t go back on her word?”

Jimena wrapped the shawl tight over her knuckles. She hadn’t been a lady for a long time, and by Silver’s smirk, she knew that too.

“But how do I even _do_ this?” She held out the shawl uselessly. It was a raggy thing, pretty once upon a time, if the golden frays were to be believed. “I don’t dance.”

Silver smiled, creaking back on her chair with her single boot. Compared to Jimena, she was overdressed, blood gold gilt coat and hat, black silk shirt and frilled cravat, her body filling out the clothes in heavy breasts and hips. A picture of depravity if there ever was one, and the twist of her smirk only agitated the heat in Jimena’s cheeks.

Johanna began to hum, tapping her foot in time, a strange accompaniment, and humiliation crawled up Jimena’s legs to a shameful, shaking hot in her gut.

She had lost the wager. A stupid, spiteful thing at that.

Jimena tried to halt her trembling by gripping at the shawl, feeling the weight and sensation of it, slipping it up and down her bare arms. The movement was stilted, a shameful attempt at grace, but the silk fell pretty, sliding down her hands and wrists like honey. She held it up to the light, seeing the sun stain through it, observing each stitch and pull in the fabric.

 _Someone made this_ , she thought, light headed. _Someone sat and stitched this, pulling threads like the hands of God._

It was a dramatic thought, Jimena knew that, but the moment had appeared to her so ethereal, a link between her hands on the worn fabric and the hands that had made it, and so many times Johanna had felt like that, as if her fate was a spiralled thread, tended to by Johanna, who now had fallen silent.

There was no music, save the rush of the tide through the port holes, and as the deck creaked, Jimena moved her foot in time, bringing her hips with it, and from Silver there came a take of breath.

The waves rippled back and forth, as Jimena followed suit, allowing the sea as it ever did to dictate her travels. She rose the scarf above her head, allowing the texture to swim down onto her face, her chest, shimmering past her exposed stomach. In her memory, the shallows were about her ankles, the twinkling greens of Johanna’s kohl eyes, light undulating on the skin of the water.

The ocean surged. Jimena rolled against it, extending her arms slow and careful, craning her back to the invisible sun. As a child, she had seen the mystery curling in the winter mists shivering above the sea. How they reached in, beckoning adventure like siren songs. How she had sworn she had seen the shapes of mermaids, monsters, pirates swirling in the fogs, like the breaths of giants.

Lightly dragging her toes across the sand, unearthing and chasing crabs into the sea, crabs as red and pinching as Silver’s lips, parting like oysters to pearl teeth, parting…

Jimena released the shawl. It caressed her face, her naked shoulders, slithering free to her feet. In the opposite mirror, she had caught sight of herself, long and thin and sunbeaten, a toothpick woman. She touched her face, feeling along to her scar, lined from her ear to her lip. It was all such a long, long time ago.

 “Oh, lass.” Johanna’s husk drew in all the air and kept it there, in her devil lungs. “Oh lass, look at ye.”

Johanna removed her hat, her black braids shaken free, uncurling her fingers toward Jimena in a beckon, and Jimena complied, stepping over the shawl.

“Did…” She laughed, a little raw. “Did I uphold my end of the wager?”

“Oh, _Jimmy_.” She loved how she said that, rumbling contralto like the wake of a storm, straddling Jimena on her single knee, parting the rag skirt to reveal the bare legs beneath, thick nails cut into the Y of her hips. “Lookin’ at you, so lost in yerself.”

Jimena stared at Johanna and saw she was the murky red rock of the sea bed, the light spatting in thin green shallows, the mystery and mayhem huddled away in sea fogs, just out of the sight of ignorant men.

Johanna stroked her hands and body, counting each scar, tidal white.

“You’re the sea, aren’t you?” She whispered. Johanna pushed her tongue between her teeth and sniggered. “I was looking for it, as a babe. But you, you are it, aren’t you? The wilderness.”

“Oh, love!” Johanna guffawed at that, loud and rich and rough. “By the powers! Poetry now, aye? I didn’t have ye down as the type. But…” She slipped her hand beneath Jimena, causing the other woman to arch and cry. “The way you moved, _that_ was poetry. As if the very brine was in yer blood.”

Johanna knew. Johanna had saw, and watched, and listened.

And _knew._

“I wasn’t looking for the call of the sea.” Jimena cupped her face, breathless, the strong features of Johanna upturned toward her, aquamarine eyes swathed in kohl black. “I was looking for you. Always.”

“Oh, _love.”_ Johanna bit at her ear, soft and terrible. “If that be so, my lass, come and _drown_ in me a while.”

The sun shone through the shawl, left abandoned on the floor.


End file.
